States struggle with unemployment funds still in the red, By Jake Grovum, October 8, 2012, Stateline: “More than $26 billion in lingering debt and billions in mounting interest have forced a number of states to scale back unemployment benefits, raise taxes, tap general funds and even turn to the private bond market as they look to shore up unemployment insurance trust funds that plunged into the red during the Great Recession. And now, years removed from the depth of the crisis, there’s concern that some of funds are being refilled so slowly – if at all – that certain states could be in an even worse position when the next downturn comes, compounding a problem that’s plagued them for years…”
Day: October 10, 2012
UN World Hunger Figures
UN revises world hunger figures, blames flawed method, data for faulty 1 billion estimate, Associated Press, October 9, 2012, Washington Post: “The United Nations said Tuesday its 2009 headline-grabbing announcement that 1 billion people in the world were hungry was off-target and that the number is actually more like 870 million. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization blamed flawed methodology and poor data for the bum projection, and said it now uses a much more accurate set of parameters and statistics to calculate its annual estimate of the world’s hungry. FAO issued its 2012 state of food insecurity report on Tuesday, and its core point was to set the record straight about the number of the world’s undernourished people, applying the more accurate data retroactively to 1990. And the good news, FAO said, is that the number of hungry people has actually been declining steadily — rather than increasing — over the past two decades, although progress has slowed since the 2007-2008 food crises and the global economic downturn…”
SNAP Enrollment – Staten Island, NY
More than 47,000 Staten Islanders now get ‘food stamp’ help, By Deborah Young, October 7, 2012, Staten Island Advance: “They are becoming ever more familiar at Staten Island supermarket check-out aisles – those white and blue EBT cards, slipped quietly out of the wallet when it’s time to pay. One in 10 Islanders received the government benefit commonly known as food stamps as of June 2012, according to the most recent statistics from the Human Resources Administration — the city department that oversees the federal program meant to keep Americans out of hunger’s grip. The 47,131 Islanders who got help paying for groceries (but no other form of assistance) represented a quadrupling since June, 2000, when 10,263 Islanders received the benefit. The use of food stamps — a monthly allocation of funds for groceries, available only to citizens or legal residents of the country who have lived here five years or longer — has increased far more sharply in the borough than across the city and the nation, where the number of recipients is also on the rise…”